Ivory-bill paper and videoI don't know what is most amazing about this find: that the bird is still extant or that those in the know could keep quiet for more than a year. A lot of people must have known. They got money for the search and TNC and the US Fish and Wildlife Service were buying land in the area.

I drifted kind of unwillingly into conservation biology. It's a depressing field in which you often feel like your job is to document species before they disappear. This story is a rare glimmer of hope, although I know the only long-term hope is human population control.

Kelly Cassidy
Pullman, WA
mailto:lostriver at completebbs.com